come out of their houses and murder all opposers: but when they were putting it in execution, the unusual crowing and fluttering of the cocks, about the place they attempted to enter at, discovered their design; upon which the Danes became so enraged that they doubled their cruelty, and used them with more severity than ever. Soon after they were forced from the Danish yoak, and to revenge themselves on the cocks, for the misfortune they involved them in, instituted this custom of knocking them on the head on Shrove Tuesday, the day on which it happened. This sport, tho' at first only practised in one city, in process of time became a natural divertisement, and has continued ever since the Danes first lost this island." In the Gentleman's Journal, or the Monthly Miscellany, for January 1692-3, is given an English epigram, "On a cock at Rochester," by Sir Charles Sedley, wherein occur the following lines, which imply, as it should seem, as if the cock suffered this unusual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter's crime in denying his lord and master: "May'st thou be punish'd for St. Peter's crime, A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. liii. July, 1783, p. 578, says, "The barbarous practice of throwing at a cock tied to a stake at Shrovetide, I think I have read has an allusion to the indignities offered by the Jews to the Saviour of the world before his crucifixion." In the preface to Hearne's edition of Thomas Otterbourne, p. 66, he tells us that this custom of throwing at cocks must be traced to the time of King Henry the Fifth, and our victories then gained over the French, whose name in Latin is synonymous with that of a cock; and that our brave countrymen hinted by it that they could as easily, at any time, overthrow the Gallic armies as they could knock down the cocks on Shrove Tuesday. To those who are satisfied with Hearne's explanation of the cus tom we must object that, from the very best authorities, it appears also to have been practised in France, and that, too. long before the reign of our Henry the Fifth. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vii. Jan. 1737, p. 7, says, (I think very erroneously,) that the "inhabitants of London, by way of reproach for imitating the French in their modes and fashions, were named Cockneys, (turning upon the thought of a cock signifying a Frenchman,) i. e. apes and mimics of France." With regard to the word Cockney, my learned friend Mr. Douce is of opinion, that perhaps after all that has been said with respect to the origin and meaning of this word, it is nothing more than a term of fondness or affection used towards male children, (in London more particularly,) in the same manner as Pigsnie is used to a woman. The latter word is very ancient in our tongue, and occurs in Chaucer : "She was a primerole, a piggesnie, For anie Lord to liggen in his bedde, The Romans used Oculus in the like sense, and perhaps Pigsnie, in the vulgar language, only means Ocellus, the eyes of that creature being remarkably small. Congreve, in his Old Batchelor, makes Fondle-wife call his mate" Cockey." Burd and Bird are also used in the same sense. Shadwell not only uses the word Pigsney in this sense, but also Birdsney. See his Plays, i. 357, iii. 385. The learned Hickes, in his Gram. Anglo.-Sax. Ling. Vett. Septentr. Thes. i. 231, gives the following derivation of Cockney: "Nunc Coquin, Coquine, quæ olim apud Gallos otio, gulæ et ventri deditos ignavum, ignavam, desidiosum, desidiosam, segnem significabant. Hinc urbanos, utpote a rusticis laboribus, ad vitam sedentariam et quasi desidiosam avocatos pagani nostri olim Cokaignes, quod nunc scribitur Cockneys, vocabant. Et poeta hic noster in monachos et moniales, ut segne genus hominum, qui desidiæ dediti, ventri indulgebant et coquinæ amatores erant, malevolentissimè invehitur; monasteria et monasticam vitam in Descriptione Terræ Cokaineæ parabolice perstringens." See also Tyrwhitt's observations on this word. in his Chaucer, ed. 1775, iv. 253, C. Tales, 4206; Reed's Old Plays, v. 83, xi. 306, 307; Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, ii. 151 The sense of the word Cockney seems afterwards to have degenerated into an effeminate person. Buttes, in his Dyets Dry Dinner, Lond. 1599, c. 2, says, "A Cochni is inverted, being as much as incoct, unripe;" but little stress car be laid upon our author's etymology. In the Workes of Johr Heiwood, newly imprinted, 1598, is the following curious passage: "Men say He that comth every day, shall have a Cocknay, He that comth now and then, shall have a fat hen." Carpentier, under the year 1355, mentions a petition of the scholars to the masters of the school of Ramera, to give them a cock, which they asserted the said master owed them upon Shrove Tuesday, to throw sticks at, according to the usual custom, for their sport and entertainment.? Among the games represented in the margin of the "Roman d'Alexandre," preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, is a drawing of two boys carrying a third on a stick thrust between his legs, who holds a cock in his hands. They are followed by another boy, with a flag or standard emblazoned with a cudgel. Mr. Strutt has engraved the group in his Sports and Pastimes, pl. 35. He supposes, p. 293, that it represents a boyish triumph: the hero of the party having either won the cock, or his bird escaped unhurt from the dangers to which he had been exposed.3 This sport, now almost entirely forgotten among us, we wish consigned to eternal oblivion; an amusement fit only for the bloodiest savages, and not for humanised men, much [Brand has fallen somewhat into confusion here, the word Cockney having several distinct meanings. See a full account of them in Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 261.] 2 In Carpentier's Glossary, under the words "Gallorum pugna," A.D. 1458, some differences are mentioned as subsisting between the mayor and aldermen of Abbeville, and the dean and chapter of the church of St. Ulfra, which are made up on the following condition; "C'est assavoir que lesdiz Doyen et Cappitle accordent que doresenavant ilz souffreront et consentiront, que cellui qui demourra roy d' l'escolle la nuit des Quaresmiaulx, apporte ou fache apporter devers le Maieur de laditte Ville ou Camp S. George, le Cocq, qui demourra ledit jour ou autre jour victorieux, ou autre cocq; et que ledit roy presente au dit maieur pour d'icellus faire le cholle en la maniere accoutumée. Quæ ultima verba explicant Lit. remiss. an. 1355, in Reg. 84, ch. 278. " Petierunt a magistro Erardo Maquart magistro scholarum ejusdem villæ de Rameru quatenus liberaret et traderet eis unum gallum, quem, sicut dicebant, idem magister scholarum debebat eis die ipsa (Carniprivii) ut jacerent baculos ad gallum ipsum, more solito, pro eorum exhillaratione et ludo." The date of the illumination is not 1433, as Mr. Strutt mentions, but 1343. See the MS. Bodl. 264. Less for Christians. That ingenious artist, Hogarth, has satirised this barbarity in the first of the prints called the Four Stages of Cruelty. Trusler's description is as follows: "We have several groupes of boys at their different barbarous diversions; one is throwing at a cock, the universal Shrove-tide amusement, beating the harmless feathered animal to jelly." The custom of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday is still (1791) retained at Heston, in Middlesex, in a field near the church. Constables have been often directed to attend on the occasion, in order to put a stop to so barbarous a custom, but hitherto they have attended in vain. I gathered the following particulars from a person who regretted that in his younger years he had often been a partaker of the sport. The owner of the cock trains his bird for some time before Shrove Tuesday, and throws a stick at him himself, in order to prepare him for the fatal day, by accustoming him to watch the threatened danger, and by springing aside, avoid the fatal blow. He holds the poor victim on the spot marked out by a cord fixed to his leg, at the distance of nine or ten yards, so as to be out of the way of the stick himself. Another spot is marked at the distance of twenty-two yards, for the person who throws to stand upon. He has three shys, or throws, for twopence, and wins the cock if he can knock him down and run up and catch him before the bird recovers his legs. The inhuman pastime does not end with the cock's life, for when killed it is put into a hat, and won a second time by the person who can strike it out. Broomsticks are generally used to shy with. The cock, if wel. trained, eludes the blows of his cruel persecutors for a long time, and thereby clears to his master a considerable sum of money. But I fear lest, by describing the mode of throwing at cocks, I should deserve the censure of Boerhaave on another occasion: "to teach the arts of cruelty is equivalent to committing them."1 In Men-Miracles, with other Poems, by M. Lluellin, Stu The London Daily Advertiser, Wednesday, March, 7, 1759, says, Yesterday, being Shrove Tuesday, the orders of the justices in the City nd Liberty of Westminster were so well observed that few cocks were seen to be thrown at, so that it is hoped this barbarous custom will be left off." dent of Christ-Church, Oxon, 1679, p. 48, is the following song on cock-throwing, in which the author seems ironically to satirise this cruel sport : "Cocke a doodle doe, 'tis the bravest game, Take a cock from his dame, And bind him to a stake, How he struts, how he throwes, How his mistress cackles, Thus to find him in shackles, And tied to a packe-thread garter. Oh the beares and the bulls Are but corpulent gulls To the valiant Shrove-tide martyr." Battering with massive weapons a cock tied to a stake, is an annual diversion," says an essayist in the Gentleman's Magazine, Jan. 1737, p. 6," that for time immemorial has prevailed in this island." A cock has the misfortune to be called in Latin by the same word which signifies a Frenchman. "In our wars with France, in former ages, our ingenious forefathers," says be, "invented this emblematical way of expressing their derision of, and resentment towards that nation; and poor Monsieur at the stake was pelted by men and boys in a very rough and hostile manner." He instances the same thought at Blenheim House, where, over the portals, is finely carved in stone the figure of a monstrous lion tearing to pieces a harmless cock, which may be justly called a pun in architecture. "Considering the many ill consequences," the essayist goes on to observe, "that attend this sport, I wonder it has so long subsisted among us. How many warm disputes and bloody quarrels has it occasioned among the surrounding mob! Numbers of arms, legs, and skulls have been broken by the massive weapons designed as destruction to the sufferer in the string. It is dangerous in some places to pass the streets on Shrove Tuesday; 'tis risking life and limbs to appear abroad that day. It was first introduced by way of contempt to the French, and to exasperate the minds of the people against that nation. 'Tis a low, mean expression of our rage, even in time of war." One part of this extract is singularly corroborated by a passage in the Newcastle |